


get into my car, got a bad desire

by burgundians



Series: black tracks and dingy dives [2]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Mentions of Cancer, Mentions of Character Death, Past Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-16
Updated: 2013-06-16
Packaged: 2017-12-15 04:48:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/845502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burgundians/pseuds/burgundians
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He orders another drink, the strongest they have. Shattered little princess in a black dress and he doesn't know whether to laugh or cry; americana au</p>
            </blockquote>





	get into my car, got a bad desire

1.

 

Maybe she’s bored, he thinks. Little american princess, all big blue eyes. Maybe she wants one adventure, one week of wildness before settling down with a high school boyfriend and popping out kids, trapped behind a white picket fence.

And he would never refuse a lady.

 

~

 

She’s never done anything like this before. She’d been sitting at the bar in her little black dress (everybody should have one, her mother says, the sun gleaming off her scalp), looking terribly out of place, and not feeling it. He walked in, smelling of abandon and motor oil, recklessness and wind.

 

He buys her a drink, looking like he’s famished.

 

“Take me away.” She says, and he does.

 

Of course he does, she didn’t expect anything else.

 

~

 

It’s the dingiest dive he’s found and she’s calmly sitting there, in a pink little sundress he wants to rip off her, looking perfectly at home. Her Mary Jane heels tapped an inaudible beat on the dirty floor.

 

“Gotta hand it to you, princess. I thought you’d have caught the first bus home by now.” The cold beer’s numbing his hand and he reaches for a cigarette.

 

“What makes you say that?” Clear voice, even her pronunciation’s perfect. She looks at him with a raised eyebrow, the greasy hamburger barely nibbled sitting in front of her.

 

“Know the type, ‘s all.”

 

“Is that so?” She smiles at his cocky tone, and for a moment looks like she’ll eat him alive.

 

~

 

She almost tears his back to ribbons, on the first night, and he realises she isn’t some wanna-be Debbie, experienced behind the bleachers and wearing white on Sundays.

 

She falls like sand through his fingers and he doesn’t know what to do with a girl like that.

 

~

 

She was lying in the back seat, feet hanging out of the window.

 

He’s finishes the stale beer before throwing the bottle away and climbing in the car again.

 

“Let’s go.” She slides her long legs inside (and god does he want them wrapped around him) and leans forward. An arm reaches around his throat and the frames of her sunglasses feel cool when they brush against the skin.

 

“Where to next?” She breathes in his ear and there’s goose bumps he can’t blame on the heat.

 

~

 

Most eyes turn to her when she enters a room. It’s nobody’s fault, really, not even her own. She must have been a queen in a past life, he thinks, one that made men die for her without even trying.

 

“Don’t you have somebody waiting for you? Looking like you do, there must be somebody.” He wants to get a rise out of her, anything. He usually takes a sick pleasure in ruining blushing school girls and newly-weds, but with her he wants to break the bottle on the floor. He won’t, though. His ma taught him better manners than that.

 

She traces circles on the spilled beer and replied with a hollow “there used to be”.

 

“What happened, he ran off with your best friend?” He can’t resist the jab.

 

“He’s dead.” The smile couldn’t have left his face faster if she had slapped it off. “His funeral had been that morning.”

 

She slides off the bench, _legs closed, like a lady_ , and walks out of the bar.

 

He orders another drink, the strongest they have. Shattered little princess in a black dress, and he doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

 

2.

 

Philip never smelt like cigarettes. She can’t help thinking that’s not fair, but the world’s never been fair to her either.

 

It’s three in the morning and she finds Killian sitting against the ice machine in the motel, head hidden in folded arms. His eyes are bloodshot when he looks up at her and she leads him to their room.

 

_Philip smelled like sunshine and sweat and grass and deodorant after football practice and he’d kiss her on her doorstep and look at her like she was on an altar._

He hated cigarettes.

 

~

 

_There’s something exhilarating about a dark track as far as the eye can see._

 

~

 

He feels tense, fingers clutching the steering wheel. He hasn’t said a word in five hours, not since he woke up with one of the worst headaches of his life. Aurora’s calmly sitting next to him, reading the same brochure she picked up at the motel entrance for the tenth time. He steals glimpses of her hands out of the corner of his eye and he sees the cheap paper melding to the sweat of her fingers.

 

The AC’s been busted for three years and a less than memorable trip through South Carolina.

 

His resolve cracks an hour later and he blames it on the heat.

 

~

 

“I got involved with a married woman, a couple years ago.” Her eyes drifted to him.

 

“What happened?”

 

“She wanted to come with me.” He looked at the mileage. Man, it’d been a while. “Her husband tracked us down and shot her dead.”

 

~

 

“I’ve never seen the sea.” The brochure in her lap was advertising a beach resort with affordable prices and fun for the whole family.

 

“Never?”

 

“A school trip to Colombus, to the Museum of Art. That’s as far as I’d gone, before now.” She shrugged and adjusted the sun visor.

 

“What did you see?” She doesn’t answer, just smiles and he turns east.

 

~

 

_That long black line stretching before him is freedom, and escape and the Holy Land all rolled into one._

_It has been since he was twelve and his brother taught him how to drive. Since he was fourteen and his mom was crying in the kitchen with a black eye, golden dust swirling around his ankles._

_Since he was sixteen, with a fake ID and a piece of junk his brother left him when he went West._

 

~

 

“Philip was the stupidest thing.” A Claddagh ring was being twisted in her hands. “A car crash. How stupid is that.”

 

It wasn’t a question and she turns her back on him. The yellow light outside filters through the curtains and he reaches out a hand. There’s a trail of goosebumps left by the finger that runs parallel to her spaghetti straps.

 

“It is stupid.” He whispers. She laughs and it sounds like glass breaking.

 

~

 

He takes her to Maine, foggy, cold Maine and she smiles when she sees the sea.

 

“It’s not California, but...” She grabs his hand and he’s lost for words.

 

~

 

She reaches for him and kisses him and it tastes like ‘see you soon’. She walks out of the car and he can’t help it.

 

“WHAT DID YOU SEE?” He sticks his head out of the window and shouts.

 

“HOPPER!” She shouts back and walks away, the girl in the pink sundress fading in the throng of grey.

 


End file.
